Software Crisis in Software Engineering: Software delivery which some kind of errors or after the completion of the scheduled date causes huge financial losses and is also extremely inconvenient on one’s part as history tells us. Situations like the Y2K problem which was disastrous in most of the countries is considered to be one of the catastrophic failures in terms of economic, administrative and political functioning may be termed as a Software Crisis. Thus a Software crisis may be explained as a mismatch in software deliverables and the expectations a user have from the computer system in terms of its capacity to work. During 20th century it was an emerging issue since computing flourished and software was incapable to catch up. Due to the software crisis, programmers had to struggle always in order to keep pace.
The problems attached with low quality software like inefficient software development, improper functioning of the software systems along with the unhappiness within the software users were the major causes for the software crisis. Late 1960s saw that software development is totally different from producing other products. It was later observed in the software development process that employing more manpower or people doesn’t at all help in speeding up the development process. At times, it ends up in having negative impacts such as delay in completing the in- hand projects , poor software quality, etc. only because following a strict schedule in order to maintain the quality becomes difficult at time. The development of a software has been a matter of strategic importance for long as the focus was to be within a stipulated schedule and time frame in order to maintain the quality standards.
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Presently, the turnover is more than millions of rupees in the software market. Moreover, approximately thirty Percent of this value is kept for individual computers and with the rest , software is created which has specific users and at times organizations. One of the core sectors where software application is essential and at times mandatory is the banking sector due to its complete dependence on software applications. Failures in Software technology-oriented field led to huge loss on account of time, priceless human lives and last but not the least is money. Since history witnessed such failures, few of them are as listed below:
Software Crisis in Software Engineering
1.The 2003 Northeast blackout was one of the most important power system failures in the North American history . Due to this blackout, large number of power plants failed and approximately fifty million customers faced power loss which resulted in a huge financial threat to currency. Afterwards, it was understood that a software bug was the reason behind this unprecedented failure in the power monitoring/noting along with the management system.
2. Y2K problem basically referred to the huge amount of drawback in the processing of data after the year 2000. During 1990s, realization of the experts began to understand this important shortcoming in computer application and then in order to handle such a problem millions were spent.
3. The year 1996 physically witnessed the end of Arian-5 space rocket which was made with a cost of $7000 million within a period of ten years in less than a minute after the rocket launch. It was later observed that there was a software bug in the rocket guidance system.
4. One of the biggest banks of US in 1996, did wrong calculation of the credited accounts of approximately 800 customers to the amount of $9241acs. It was later detected that the problem took place due to a programming bug in the banking software.
5. At the time of the Gulf War in 1991, the U.S.A. Patriot missiles acted as a defense against Scud missiles used by Iraq. But the Patriot failed to target hit the Scud several times. Thus, twenty eight US soldiers were put to sleep in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. An inquiry into the incident made clear the cause of the failed target as the small bug again and finally resulted in the wrong calculation of the missile path.
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